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The post is about why do we call devs the ones that are just prompters.
If for example here on SN people do not like to see posts written by so called LLMs, then why do we accept also apps written by the same LLM, in this case are not shitGPT anymore, are called "tools".
Another example: are you going to pay the same amount for a piece or a toy made with a 3D printer as of one made by hand?
I think its about more than that. Its about a mischaracterization of the use of AI being a boolean.
There have always been fakers. Now its just easier. People that copy and paste. AI does this much better. The results are what matter and you don't get good results from a prompter that isn't actually a dev. These tools are REALLY dumb. But good at guessing and the more clear instructions and guardrails you give it the better the results.
So, these prompters that create slop could be devs or not. But if we say they aren't devs that fixes what? There are terrible devs out there. There are terrible PMs. Results are the metric.
I will appreciate more a junior dev that is trying to write code from his head, even that he fails, than one that just jump into a prompt to finish his slop.
Failure is a human feature and that's how we learn better, from failures, not from making things faster.
Regardless of feelings the dev that is coding from his head is trying to learn and will benefit from it. AI tools can be used to accelerate learning but the temptation is to lean on them and cheat yourself out of learning.
20 years ago we didn't have all these learning tools or AI. Open source code I read helped me learn. Reading programming books. And just writing code to see if it would work. The tools have changed. Its much easier to learn now if you want to. Many are just lazy. They will pay for it in the long run.
Many are just lazy. They will pay for it in the long run.
This I understand. What I do not understand is why we still call these guys "devs".
Well... I have never met one... these people you speak of.
For all I know they could be devs. Actually know what they are doing but just are lazy. They could be script kiddies which is a good comparison. Most devs I know do not care about labels. Only the work you do.
The world is full of crappy devs. The majority probably aren't good. Its a pretty good chance that the creators of slop aren't devs. Calling them devs really doesn't change anything though. Neither does NOT calling them devs.
This online world is fake anyway. If I ever meet one of these prompters in person I will let you know. I have met people that use LLMs to write code that are not devs. They don't call themselves devs. They know they aren't. They used to just copy code from Stackoverflow.
When I was just starting in software dev I didn't want to call myself a dev. So I didn't. Then an old timer corrected me. You write code for a living you are a dev. You may suck but you are learning. It doesn't really matter what you call yourself but understand where you are and where you are going.
He was wrong about one thing. It does matter in this sense. Titles and labels can mean more or less money. Vibe coders may be able to fool fools but I don't really care about that.
If there's no AI why did you write this post?
It seems to me you are humanizing AI and buying into the pitchmen if you say the prompter is like a PM and the AI is writing the code. Right?
I mean, the AI is guessing the code. That is what is happening. And if the prompter doesn't understand what it is doing they are little more than a PM. But many product owners and even PMs were once coders and do know what they are doing. They can write code but moved up to also organize and lead projects. Get more people involved.
When I hear people speak about AI it is more often than not clear to me they haven't actually spent time to understand the computer science behind LLMs, and chatbots. When you do you realize that Scam Altman is lying to you and also so are most haters of AI. Well, the haters are just ignorant.
Its an incredible bit of software engineering these LLMs. They have a place. Its not to think for us but like most tools they can be used effectively and poorly. We are seeing more poorly than effectively mostly due to laziness and the issues with LLMs.
In the end, the problem is really dumb people. Dumb for falling for the scam and dumb for creating slop and thinking they are amazing. You don't have a create slop with AI tools. Its just easier to do it than not.